


In the Night

by punklynch



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, a little bit of swearing, cute shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 13:10:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6052789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punklynch/pseuds/punklynch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam wants to kiss Ronan</p><p>That's it</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Night

Adam was lying on his mattress. The familiar weight of one person. Two blankets. One pillow. The open window, which let in drifts of cold air every once in a while. The familiar sight of the orange streetlight glowing over his apartment. Algebra homework. Several plastic bins. An old rug. The mountain range and peaks of the sleeping boy on his floor.

Adam suspected Ronan would be more comfortable sharing his mattress.

Adam also expected Ronan would pretend to be asleep if he asked. 

But Ronan never did what was expected, unless what was expected was his very worst.

Adam wanted him to do his worst.

“Hey,” he said, more thought than word. Ronan didn’t respond. Maybe he dreamt it. Maybe he dreamt the dull nectarine glow of the room. Maybe he dreamt the boy lying next to him. If he thought too much, would it break? Would he find himself back in his double-wide? The night had an intangible quality to it, like if he reached out, it would waver and split, reality spilling in.

Dreams were a perfect place to do the impossible. The night hours between midnight and three were second best.

“Hey,” Adam repeated, spurred on by the fact that the rough edges of his voice did not catch onto the threads of the dream and pull it apart; like a ladder in a stocking.

Ronan was silent.

Night was the perfect place to do the impossible, and it had just hit 12:45.

Reaching out, he touched Ronan’s shoulder, his skin through his cotton T-Shirt hotter than the muggy night air.

_If I kissed his lips, would it wake him from his dreamer’s sleep?_

He planted his hand more firmly down on his arm and Ronan’s eyes shot open, black and opaque in the dark. Ronan sat up, the light of the moon catching his glittering irises, and he was more alive and more real than Adam had ever seen him before.

“What?” Ronan said, breaking the silence of their pounding chests, heartbeats and breathing slowly building up to a crescendo.

“Um, I…” Adam trailed off. This had seemed so easy, the path so clear, when Ronan was asleep and the dark felt like a dream. “Would you…like to sleep here?” Adam asked. The words sounded leaden in his head but were breathy and light coming out of his mouth.

Ronan’s face did something complicated. Adam thought: hiding.

“I am here, Parrish,” he replied, and there was something dangerous, like fire, in his voice. But it wasn’t something to be fearful from; it was something Adam felt like feeding.

“No, I mean. On…my bed” Adam flushed and thanked the stars it was dark.

Ronan worried his bottom lip, looking at Adam through his lashes.

Full bottom lip, thinner top one. Cupid’s bow shaping his lips into something obscene and _illicit._ There was invisible arrow in his Cupid’s bow, aimed straight at Adam’s heart. If not that organ, than something as deadly, like a lung, or a vital artery.

Adam didn’t know why Ronan didn’t argue. He just picked his body off the floor and climbed onto Adam’s mattress. Adam squeezed himself as close as could to the wall, trying not to flinch at how cool it was on his sweat-slicked skin. They were silent for a bit, and Adam swore neither boy was breathing.

Ronan turned to look at him, his eyes harrowed like he was in prayer. _Was that blasphemous?_

But Adam was worshipping too. _Was there a patron saint of godly boys and centimetres between shoulders?_

Ronan swallowed, and Adam followed his throat down, down, down.

_If I kissed him there, would I steal his voice; his vocal chords tangled in my lips?_

And his eyes slid further down, until he wasn’t looking at Ronan’s carved-marble neck, but his hands. They looked like they belonged there, caressed by Adam’s sheets.

It was not a good feeling, to be jealous of bed sheets; but they were the ones who got to hold onto Ronan’s body like a second skin.

Adam flicked his eyes up; he knew he had been caught.

Caught in Ronan’s blue eyes, and furrowed eye-brows and slightly parted lips, pink and dewy like glacé cherries.

He was a ship unmoored and the waves battering against the hull and the stormy sky and the people screaming at the Lord for mercy and the flag getting thrashed by the violent wind.

Untethered. Unbound.

_If I kissed him, would it centre me, or would I just be tossed out to sea?_

“Adam,” Ronan uttered his name like a secret.

Adam blinked, his eyes unshuttered, they were spilling all his secrets. He didn’t know how to reply, so he just placed his hand, once again, on Ronan’s shoulder, but this time a little higher, where it joined his neck.

Ronan’s pulse was trying to beat out of his skin, Adam could feel it under his calloused fingertips. _Is this what it feels like to touch Holy water? To step a foot into a desert? To breath on the highest peak of the tallest mountain in the world?_

Ronan leant into the touch, nuzzling his face into Adam’s hand, and Adam let his hand travel further up.

Ronan sucked in a shallow breath, as Adam left his fingers rest on Ronan’s cheek, one finger touching the corner of Ronan’s mouth.

_moremoremore_

_More,_ whispered a voice in Adam’s head, like the voice that pushed him to apply for Aglionby, like the voice that told him to sacrifice himself to the trees. It was like those voices, but softer, more hesitant because _this_ wasn’t as sturdy as a forest, however monumental and magical it felt.

“Ronan,” Adam tried, because how could spoken word compensate for the thoughts running through his head, crashing into his consciousness like tidal waves, lapping at his shores, like a strong current pulling him out?

Something cracked in Ronan’s exterior, mirroring a fracture inside. He sat up, shaking off Adam’s hand. He turned away, and Adam could see the notches of his spine disappearing into his shirt.

Adam sat up too, placing a hand on Ronan’s shoulder. Ronan shook it off again.

“What’s wrong?” Adam said

Ronan spoke to the floor. “I can’t Par- Adam. I just can’t fucking…” he trailed off.

He sat up straighter, but he still hadn’t turned around. He seemed to be stealing himself “I can’t, okay? I can’t take it if you’re just joking. Or just testing. Or fulfilling some sort of sadistic ego stroke, okay?”

Adam’s stomach floored. _How did you tell your friend you wanted to kiss the words out of his mouth? To steal the very air from his lungs and leaving him gasping? To have him whisper your name like a prayer and hold your body like rosary beads?_

They were silent, and the tension pulled Adam taut. He wanted to snap. To devour. To beg a confession off Ronan’s lips. He swore he heard Ronan’s heartbeat stop. _I could make it start again. Compress Ronan’s chest against mine and kiss him to the tempo of my heartbeat._

Adam didn’t do that, instead he did the only thing he knew how to do, when it came to Ronan. “What the fuck?”

“Jesus,” Ronan cursed “Just fucking get it over with okay. I’m just some cheap thrill while you find another Blue Sargent to fall in love with”

“What the fuck?”  Adam repeated

“For Christ’s sake, you’re starting to sound like a broken record. Just, you’re really making me go through with this whole thing, aren’t you? As if knowing it isn’t enough. You’re actually making me say it”

He did, just not for the reasons Ronan thought he did.

“I like you” Ronan spat, but it sounded more like “I hate you”

And in that moment, Adam felt like laughing.

“You are so damn stupid,” Adam replied, after a moment. It sounded more like a confession than Ronan’s had. Ronan turned, to face Adam. It had that complicated look on it again, not like how he looked when Adam had his fingers against his lips. He wondered how simple Ronan would look after he kissed him.

“Seriously,” Adam continued.

Suddenly, it was his turn to be nervous. He breathed in, and it felt like his last. Ronan was a lit fuse, anger and hope evident in his every move, in every tremor of his jaw, every tap of his fingers against his legs.

“You are so stupid, because if you had an ounce of intelligence, you would have noticed,” Adam’s voice faltered, the confidence he had inhabited so well a second ago vanishing.

“That I like you too” he finished, forcing the words out of his mouth in a rush.

They were on unchartered territory now, but weren’t they always?

Hope was winning in the storm of Ronan’s eyes, his lips parted ever so slightly.

_God. I could kiss them_

And Adam did. Capturing Ronan’s lips in a soft, chaste kiss.

He broke off after a second. It was barely a kiss, but it seemed to unlock something furious and mad within Adam. He wrapped his arms around Ronan’s shoulders and pulled.

Ronan needed no encouragement, meeting him halfway, in a messy and tangled kiss. It was lips and teeth and tongue and _hands,_ everywhere. Sliding up his back, circling his waist, brushing his thighs, slipping through his hair. Every touch left a snail-trail of feeling on Adam’s skin. He could not imagine a time where he was more alive. It almost hurt, how his overstimulated nerves responded, again and again, to Ronan’s touches.

They broke, coming up for air, gasping back lungful’s like drowning men. They were, in a way, Adam supposed.

Ronan was pliant under Adam’s body as he lay down on the mattress, allowing Adam to pin him in place with his hips.

There was something so otherworldly about kissing Ronan. Kissing this beautiful boy, fashioned like an angel, with the body of a human and the head of a dreamer.

And Ronan _wanted_ to kiss Adam, to drink the desolation and desire from Adam’s body.

 

And when they finally laid down to sleep, Adam mused that he could get familiar with this. They were lying on his mattress, compressed under the weight of two people. Two blankets, Ronan’s chest for a pillow. Cool air drifting through the open window, chilling Adam’s skin where it lay against Ronan’s.

The night hours between midnight and three were the perfect place to do the impossible; dreams just couldn’t measure up to the tangible feeling of reality.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading :)  
> this is like the first pynch fic i've written that i feel completely happy with, so enjoy xx


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